This invention relates to automatic drain exhaust valves for pressurized gas systems.
Compressed gas aqueous vapor often condenses to water, which stays in surge tanks or drain separators of compressor systems, and sometimes mixes with lubricating oil. Such drain liquids must be exhausted out of the systems, because they can cause many problems;, for example they sometimes damage pneumatic tools and machines or they mix with paint in paint sprayers.
For this purpose many sorts of drain traps are utilized now, but most of them comprise floatactuated valves. When oil-rich drain liquids or dusty drain liquids flow into such traps, the floats are sometimes prevented from moving properly by the viscosities of the oily or dusty liquids. Thus, automatic drain traps which use floats as detecting devices of drain-liquid level, are not always accurate.
Thus, it is an object of this invention to overcome the problems involved in employing a float and other mechanical mechanisms in an automatic drain exhaust valve.